Posts Tagged ‘FedEx Cup’

Word is the new Fiat marketing head told BBDO that the Ram Challenge stuff was "incredible."

Interesting comments from a source. Many BBDO creative’s were at work over Labor Day weekend. NY isn’t doing the creative for this pitch. Which prompted the assumption they (a) have great confidence in the Detroit staff pulling it off (supposedly Gary Pascoe is taking the lead and not Rick Dennis), or (b) they’re not wasting their time in NY and have already written off the account.

All BBDOers have received an email that said what a great body of work BBDO has produced thus far and that they were going to succeed in retaining the account. Word has it the new Fiat marketing head, had all raves for the current work a few weeks back, going so far as to tell them that the Ram Challenge stuff was incredible and that BBDO had received a lot of bad direction from Chrysler in their campaign work. Then Fiat suddenly did a 180 and put Chrysler up for grabs.

I would think that if BBDO loses the Chrysler brand, it’s only a matter of time before the other two went on the block. And who would take just the national work without the lucrative dealer work? And media buying money? All big buck generators. I can imagine BBDO holding on to Jeep since they just got that back from Cutwater, but that was under the old Chrysler regime, not the Fiat guys. Soooooo… And I heard that all the new creative for Jeep was done out of NY anyway.

BMW Hosts Major FedEx Cup Golf Event

Sponsorship of televised professional sports events by automobile advertisers has, like most TV advertising, been significantly cut this year. The spring has always been a so-so time anyway with the exception of golf, but this sport has also lost major sponsors and advertisers for both the men’s and women’s professional golfers.

Not too long ago, if a car company didn’t have its name on at least one tournament it was tantamount to not serving shrimp at the Christmas party. Most dealers love golf and so do many company execs. One exec who must go nameless, the head of a division of a Big 3 company, purportedly went from never having played the game to having a very low handicap and pairing up with one of the biggest names, all at shareholders’ expense, but I digress.

BMW has taken an aggressive approach with sponsorship of a key PGA tour event.

Pro golf and professional golfers have been hurt the most in advertising and sponsorship cut-backs. Buick, once the host of the most tournaments has cancelled everything including sponsorship of Tiger Woods. Ford’s left its named tournaments to go fallow. Chrysler dropped out of the famous Bob Hope Tournament and a couple other events. Honda’s taken a pass on golf and so has Nissan.

And when was the last time you saw a golfer with a car logo on his shirt, cap or golf bag? Couple years ago, right?

Only BMW and Mercedes remain for the car golf fan, make that luxury car golf fan to be demographically correct, with sponsorships of tournaments. The latter has the first PGA event of the year and provides vehicles for a couple events.

Hole in One!

BMW has taken an aggressive approach in the U.S. with sponsorship and naming rights of a key event in the PGA Tour ending-play-off-event known as the FedEx Cup. This multi-million dollar prize event is centered on a players ranking at the end of the regular season with only those of with a minimum ranking invited to play in the first of four events. As the short play-off season – just four weeks long – winds down players are cut based on scores at each week’s events until the final.